In general, applications or services must conform to the following requirements to join the Microsoft Azure Certified program. As the program is currently in limited availability, meeting these requirements does not guarantee acceptance into the program.

Business Requirements

Virtual machines and application services may be offered by partners through hourly billing or bring-your-own-license models

Customers with Azure subscriptions may purchase from the Azure Marketplace through their Enterprise Agreement or pay-as-you-go subscription.

Follow the Microsoft onboarding process for validation of either your virtual machine images or application service and their supporting marketing content

Agree to the standard Azure Marketplace Publisher Agreement

Provide marketing materials that meet Microsoft criteria for your application to be listed on azure.microsoft.com and in the Azure Management Portal

Partners must make technical support available to their customers in a commercially reasonable manner, whether free, paid, or through community support

Technical Requirements

The program covers applications or services that run in Azure Virtual Machines or as application services that conform to the Azure Resource Provider API

Virtual machine images must be composed of a single VHD, as described in the Azure documentation for Windows Server and Linux

Your application or solution must pass validation tests that confirm it runs well in the Azure environment and exhibits a high-quality customer experience

Microsoft Azure Certified gets you into the Azure Marketplace which is available in a subset of Azure-supported regions. There are certain restrictions for where solutions can be sold from and where they can be sold to.

The Microsoft Azure Certified program is the path for getting your application listed in the Azure Virtual Machines Marketplace. The Microsoft Azure Marketplace, the Azure Virtual Machines Marketplace and the Microsoft Azure Store are separate marketplaces today, each with their own function, business models and partner onboarding procedures. The table below summarizes the differences:

The Data Market used to contain a mix of data sets and finished applications. The Data Marketplace is being integrated with the new Azure Marketplace, but still exists as a standalone gallery view for now